The Cincinnati Bengals made a decision on Tee Higgins... at least for now. Higgins was slapped with the franchise tag for the second straight year and now the Bengals can either trade him, sign him to a long-term deal, or he'll play on the tag once again.
Higgins broke the news himself, posting a simple "tag" on X before the insiders eventually reported the news. Higgins probably isn't thrilled with this news and his teammate, Ja'Marr Chase, has joined him in that club.
When finding out about the news, Chase reacted on his Instagram story in a comical, but telling way. Chase posted an image of Joe Burrow side-eyeing the camera and then had a man in the corner of the post looking at his phone, saying, "WHAT?". He also tagged Higgins so there's no question what Chase's post is about.
Ja'Marr Chase reacts to Tee Higgins getting tagged for second straight year
Duke Tobin insisted last week at the Combine that the team was hoping to get a long-term deal done with Higgins yet here we are. There's certainly some risk that comes with paying two receivers a ton of money when the offense was nowhere near the problem last year.
That being said, this offense is nearly unstoppable when Burrow, Chase, and Higgins are all playing their best ball. Perhaps the plan is simply to just outscore everyone and let every game be a shootout. Besides, without Higgins, it's obvious that Burrow is going to throw to Chase every single time so having him there makes things a little more unpredictable.
It'll be interesting to see what happens from here. On the one hand, Burrow has been shouting from the rooftops for the team to keep his guys in town so the front office is clearly doing what they can to not irritate him. On the other hand, it's going to be hard to bring in other necessary talent if they've got so much tied up in three players.
We'll just have to wait and see what goes down.